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Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine logoLink to Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
. 1996 Oct;89(10):548–551. doi: 10.1177/014107689608901003

Does hospital-at-home make economic sense? Early discharge versus standard care for orthopaedic patients.

M Hensher 1, N Fulop 1, S Hood 1, S Ujah 1
PMCID: PMC1295953  PMID: 8976887

Abstract

Hospital-at-home has been promoted as a potentially effective means of replacing costly inpatient care with cheaper domiciliary care. We studied three hospital-at-home schemes in West London providing intensive home care for early discharge orthopaedic patients, comparing their costs with those of standard inpatient care. Although costs per day of hospital-at-home care were lower than those of inpatient care, the schemes appeared to increase the total duration of orthopaedic episodes, so that the costs of standard care, per episode, were lower than those of hospital-at-home. While hospital-at-home may offer considerable future potential, substitution of home care for inpatient care will not necessarily save resources.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Hollingworth W., Todd C., Parker M., Roberts J. A., Williams R. Cost analysis of early discharge after hip fracture. BMJ. 1993 Oct 9;307(6909):903–906. doi: 10.1136/bmj.307.6909.903. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

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